Mobile homes and preconstructed modular houses are today transported upon roads to their permanent sites for permanent installation. This is commonly done by constructing them with spring loaded wheel assemblies that are removably mounted to I-beams that extend longitudinally beneath their floors, and with hitches by which they may be pulled by trucks. Once they arrive at their permanent site they must be positioned upon foundations, pads or upon pillars. Since the permanent sites are frequently not level, they often are positioned upon pillars of diverse heights to accommodate the contour of the terrain.
Double-wide mobile homes are built in two sections that must be joined together when set upon pillars or pillar blocks once they have been transported to their permanent ground sites. Heretofore, this has been done with sets of jacks movably positioned upon tracks that are positioned beneath the I-beams permanently mounted to the bottoms of the mobile home sections. This procedure has been beset with a number of problems including the some 16 man-hours that it has typically taken to erect a single mobile home at a permanent site. The use of jacks movably placed upon tracks has also been particularly difficult to handle and quite dangerous in practice.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to the provision of improved apparatus for use in lifting and positioning mobile homes at permanent ground sites.